


You've Made My Life So Glamorous

by hetrez



Series: It's Four-Leaf Clover Time [2]
Category: Inception (2010), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-05
Updated: 2014-11-05
Packaged: 2018-02-24 05:16:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2569520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hetrez/pseuds/hetrez
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It's been years since they last spoke, even longer since they first met, and she is still the most astonishing thing he has ever been close to.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	You've Made My Life So Glamorous

**Author's Note:**

> Set a day or so after the end of [All Along the Watchtower](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2387441). Title from "'S Wonderful" by the Gershwin brothers.

Eames wakes to the faint beeping of a heart monitor, the delicious haze of industrial-strength painkillers, and Maria Hill's scowling face. He smiles. It is perhaps sloppier than his usual, but it will have to suffice. "What a vision," he says, voice faint. "Is this paradise?"

He closes his eyes, and has trouble lifting them again. He can hear the scrape of Maria's chair against the tile floor, and the rustle of fabric as she moves. "No," she says. She doesn't _sound_ angry.

Eames needs visual confirmation, but it's difficult when his eyelids are weighed down with anvils. It takes several attempts, but he manages to open his eyes again. Maria is still frowning at him. He probably earned it, and if he hasn't already, he will very soon. "How do you feel?" he asks, because she looks tired and worn.

Maria flicks her eyes to the left, where his heart monitor is cheeping quietly. "Annoyed," she says. Eames laughs gently, trying not to jostle his busted abdomen. "How do you feel?"

"Pleasantly surprised I haven't developed blood poisoning," Eames says.

Maria's face goes blank, that terrifying cold look she gets when someone has punched her. Damn.

"Maria," Eames says.

She stands up. "The doctors said you're out of the woods, but you'll have to stay here at least until you can walk without falling over."

Eames lets it go. At least he's earned her frown, now. "And where is here?" he asks instead.

Maria's shoulders ease a fraction. "Avengers Tower," she says.

"Oh, of course," Eames says, too tired and drugged to feel alarmed. He knew what he was getting into, taking the job for Barnes. He just hoped he was in possession of all his faculties when the axe fell. "With the Avengers."

Maria's mouth quirks to the side. "That's the general idea, yes."

"And when will the Avengers be handing us over to the Central Intelligence Agency? After I can walk, you said?"

Maria shakes her head. "Nobody's handing you over."

Eames says, "Bullshit."

Maria sits down again, and leans toward him. Her expression eases out of that terrible cold stillness, into something focused and intense. "I'm not working for SHIELD anymore," she says. "I'm not working for the CIA. The Avengers Initiative is fully privatized, managed by a subsidiary of Stark Industries, and we prosecute internationally wanted criminals at our discretion."

Eames stares. This was not anywhere in his plans. He had known from the moment he saw Maria that his time was running short. He had put together several escape routes, for Arthur and Ariadne and Dylan. He had planned his last words to his team, his last words to Barnes. He had decided, somewhere on the train in Barnes's dream -- in the middle of watching the man struggle and shudder, in the middle of seeing the history of his field come to life, and all the blood and pain that had created this thing he loved -- that if this was the last job he ever took, well, he'd had a fucking spectacular run of it. To have Maria unpend the entire scaffold of his future was rather a shock. "You're not turning us in."

Maria shook her head. "Frankly, it would be a waste of my time."

Eames smiles, and then he laughs. It's been years since they last spoke, even longer since they first met, and she is still the most astonishing thing he has ever been close to. "Do you remember when we first met?" he asks.

"You mean before I knocked you out, or after you woke up hogtied and covered in baby oil in the hotel bathroom?"

"I still say we could have had a delicious evening," Eames says. He feels, through the haze of drugs, the familiar glow she inspires in him. Although, usually the glow resides somewhere south of his navel. As that is contested property right now, the feeling is both welcome and uncomfortable. "Do you remember what you wore?"

Maria gets a bemused wrinkle between her eyebrows. "A dress," she says.

Eames gives up, for now. He's too high to sweet-talk. "Nevermind. Yes, a dress. It was very fetching, and surprisingly well-suited to bare-knuckle fighting."

Maria said, "We used to get them special from the quartermaster."

"Of course you did," Eames says, feeling fond. Suddenly, his eyelids are weighed down by anvils again. He yawns. "I may have to cut our lovely conversation short."

Maria reaches out then, and takes his hand. Eames holds perfectly still, and soaks in the feeling of her skin, the shape of her fingers against his. "It's all right," she says. "It's the middle of the night, anyway. You should rest."

"Yes," he says. He changes a brush of his thumb across the back of her hand, and she doesn't break his wrist. She also doesn't take his hand away. Eames feels giddy. Maybe if he goes to sleep in possession of her hand, she'll still be here when he wakes up. It's a lovely, improbable fantasy, but then, Eames is well acquainted with those. "How are the others?"

"They're all fine," Maria says. "Arthur had a mild concussion, and Ariadne and Dylan were a little shocky. But they're all good." She smiles, suddenly. "They're charming the hell out of everybody here."

Eames huffs a laugh. "I don't doubt it for a second." A thought occurs to him. "Were they here? Where are they?" It's strange for him to wake up and not be surrounded by his team. The drugs and Maria were a lovely distraction, but now that he thinks about it, he feels the lack.

Maria says, "I asked them to step out for a moment, so I could speak with you."

"You," Eames says, eyebrows climbing. "Why did you, how did you get them to listen?" If Ariadne were shot in the belly, Eames wouldn't leave her side for love or money. He feels the same about Dylan and Arthur, although you'll never catch him saying so.

Maria grins, showing teeth. "I threatened them with Interpol," she says, and then stands.

Eames's mouth falls open. He feels -- something, many things. Pleased, and infuriated, and confusingly aroused. "Marry me," he says, before he can think about it.

Maria laughs, a bright sound. "Ask me again when you're not drugged to the gills," she says. She starts walking toward the door.

"Wait," Eames says. "Are you serious? Maria? Come back here." Of all the times for him to have a bullet wound. The heart monitor squawks at him when he tries to pull himself up in the bed, and he has to shut his eyes at the pain in his belly. When he opens them again, Maria is gone.

He sags back on the hospital bed, and waits for his breathing to calm down. The heart monitor slowly calms its unsettled peeping. When Eames feels well enough to open his eyes again, he sees Ariadne and Dylan and Arthur stepping into the room. Ariadne's smile is a fragile thing, but filled with the same steel she has at her core. "You're awake," she says.

"Yes, but perhaps not for long," Eames says. "I was talking with Maria, and it rather tired me out."

Dylan says, "Eames, that woman is amazing."

"Eames," Arthur says, slowly and with great seriousness. "That woman is terrifying."

Eames smiles at all of them. He is filled with joy for his fellow man. He doesn't have blood poisoning, he is surrounded by his team, and _Maria didn't say no to him_. The world, in this moment, is good. "Yes she is," he says to Arthur. "It's marvelous."

**Author's Note:**

> My general headcanon for Eames and Maria is that Eames got in the way of a SHIELD op, back when Maria was a probie, and she knocked him out and put him in the hotel bathtub to keep him out of the way. A couple years later, SHIELD contracted Eames &co to militarize Maria's subconscious. A couple years after that, SHIELD contracted Eames's team for a dream extraction. I imagine Eames has proposed to her each of those times, and she's always said no.
> 
> I got the idea of "hogtied and covered in baby oil in a bathtub" from the amazing pollyrepeat's story [Fall Upon, Light Upon](http://archiveofourown.org/works/653971).


End file.
